• If he still refuses to explain his act by pleading amnesia, the investigation nevertheless reveals the determination of Brahim Aouissaoui, accused of killing three people in the attack on the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice in October 2020.
  • Since then, faced with the anti-terrorist investigating judge who questioned him five times between April 6, 2021 and November 28, 2022, he most often replies: "I do not remember", "I have nothing to say".
  • The blows to the victims, including to the throat, confirm "the determination and determination to kill Brahim Aouissaoui", according to the investigation.

If the Tunisian Brahim Aouissaoui, accused of killing three people in the attack on the Notre-Dame basilica in Nice in October 2020, still refuses to explain his act by pleading amnesia, the investigation nevertheless reveals his determination. "Normally tomorrow I will go to France, the land of miscreants and dogs," he wrote to a contact a few days before the fact. Since then, faced with the anti-terrorist investigating judge who questioned him five times between April 6, 2021 and November 28, 2022, he most often replies: "I do not remember", "I have nothing to say".

On October 29, 2020, around 08:30 a.m., Brahim Aouissaoui, 21, entered the religious building armed with a knife with a 17 cm long blade. First he almost beheads Nadine Devillers, a 60-year-old faithful. Then he stabbed the Franco-Brazilian Simone Barreto Silva, 44, who took refuge in a restaurant before dying, and the sacristan Vincent Loquès, 55, father of two daughters.

An "opportunistic" amesia?

Two municipal policemen shot him several times as he threw himself at a patrol, brandishing his knife and shouting "Allah Akbar". Seriously wounded and handcuffed while waiting for help, he recited prayers, repeating "Allah Akbar" several times. When he wakes up in the hospital, he claims to have forgotten everything about his actions, wrongly assures that his parents are dead and is mistaken in the composition of his siblings.

During his first interrogation, he pushes the denials to the point of absurdity, refusing to recognize himself in photos found in his phone or CCTV images. "If it had really been me in these images, I would recognize myself," he says impatiently. "Will you finally stop denying the obvious!" says the magistrate, stressing his "undeniable bad faith".

Two surgeries and a stay in intensive care may have altered his memories in the days before the facts, note two psychiatric experts, but not to the point of making him completely lose his memory and his biographical bearings. "The systematic and opportunistic character" of his amnesia does not constitute "a denial" but "a defense system that is a refusal of any collaboration" with justice, they consider. "He is locked in a failing memory that prevents him from knowing exactly what happened during the few days of the murderous journey that is attributed to him," says his lawyer, Tewfik Bouzenoune. "There is no evidence that he is lying about this amnesia."

A "violent psychopathic profile"

According to experts, Brahim Aouissaoui, long addicted to alcohol and drugs, "redeems himself in rigorism and asceticism before switching to radical commitment and then terrorist action". His discernment during the attack was neither abolished nor altered and he has a "violent psychopathic profile". The blows to the victims, especially to the throat, confirm "the determination and determination to kill Brahim Aouissaoui," adds a summary note. The police officers who intervened remember his "black eyes", his "cry of hatred", a "battle cry". "This man wanted to kill us," said one.

Originally from Sfax (Tunisia), he arrived on the evening of October 27 at Nice station. A black gasoline seller, he left his country on the night of 19 to 20 September aboard a boat with ten other people, without informing his family. In France, the threat of a jihadist attack was reborn with the republication in early September of the cartoons of Mohammed by Charlie Hebdo at the opening of the trial of the attacks of January 2015. Several jihadist groups are calling for targeting the France. At the end of September, a Pakistani man stabbed two people in front of the former offices of the satirical weekly in Paris. "Your initial plan is more or less concomitant with these calls," says the investigating magistrate.

The attack at the basilica is not claimed by jihadist groups, who nevertheless welcome it. On Brahim Aouissaoui, investigators found no evidence of allegiance to any of them. But for them, his migratory journey seems to be "part of a terrorist logic". Arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa, he was placed in quarantine due to the coronavirus and reached Sicily on October 11. He worked there for two weeks for the "sole purpose of obtaining the money to travel to France," according to investigators. "Normally tomorrow I will go to France, the land of disbelievers and dogs," he wrote to a contact on October 25. "My friend I work a little, I have a project, may God facilitate it," he sends the day before to another, "I have something to do, I hope that God will facilitate things."

He refutes any radicalization

If no explicit message on a planned attack was found, the investigations showed "the radicalization of a terrorist nature" of the Tunisian and "his hatred of the France". In his mobile were found photos of Abdullakh Anzorov, the assassin of Samuel Paty, and President Emmanuel Macron in front of the teacher's coffin, published on October 22 in a magazine of the Islamic State group with a call "to kill the French disbelievers". Brahim Aouissaoui denies any radicalization, even if his rigorous practice is confirmed.

In Sfax, he rubs shoulders with followers of Salafist ideology, including at least two known to the Tunisian anti-terrorist services. A user of alcohol and drugs, he changed his behavior at the end of 2018 and "became assiduous" in his religious practice, say his family and childhood friends. He fasts on Mondays and Thursdays - like Muslims of Salafist or rigorist obedience - and multiplies religious injunctions to his family and friends.

On Facebook, he regularly sends his relatives a link to a sermon by Khaled Al-Rashed, a Salafist who called for the closure of the Danish embassy after the publication of cartoons of Mohammed. "What is very strict religious practice? I do the prayer, "he retorts to the magistrate who notes that he went several times to the mosque during his stay in Nice.

"I am satisfied"

"He tried to deceive people but his career leaves no doubt about his terrorist jihadist profile determined to kill and strike the France," said Samia Maktouf, a lawyer for civil parties. After almost two years of evading the subject or invoking amnesia, Brahim Aouissaoui suggests to one of his brothers, incredulous, that he is indeed the author of the attack during a telephone conversation in July 2022. "Everything depends on the fate of the lord ... I am pleased with what the lord has written for me," he told her.

Our file on the Nice attack

In detention, where he chains incidents and gets closer to radicalized detainees, he also boasts of being the assailant of Nice. Two weeks after his arrival in June 2022 at the Meaux prison (Seine-et-Marne), he was urgently transferred to Beauvais (Oise), suspected of preparing an attack against the guards with two other radicalized inmates.

"The terrorist nature of his approach is based only on evidence gathered a posteriori. What about his radicalization before his arrival in France and his possible participation in a terrorist group? For now, there is nothing, "says his lawyer. In this case, no accomplice or sponsor could be identified.

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